3. EAT"a lot of fun try to guide your amoeba to rich sources of food""wriggle and drift in the current all in the hopes of feeding or face extinction""something about eating other player's poop makes me like this game"

4. LONG"quite a bit of fiddly dealings with picking up and placing cubes""2+ hours is a bit too long""a bit slow to start but once players have figured the mechanics things go smoothly""nice game to add to the table when a longer lighter strategic game is desired""the feeding/movement phase takes too long""after a number of games (10-15 in my case) the mechanics become repetitive"

5. THEME"fits the mechanics perfectly""awesome, and great art and gene ideas""more here than any lame historical simulation"

6. COMBINATIONS"however you want to-play, aggressively, defensively, or slyly, you should be able to find a combination of genes to suit""definite learning curve here, and some gene-combinations work much better together than others""I'm still wondering if there's something like a killer combination"

7. POOP"One amoeba's poop is another's food.""poop jokes galore""eat poop and excrete poop and when you die you turn into a rainbow of poop"

8. STRATEGIES"seem limitless with the different combination of cards""just enough randomness and strategy to make this one shine""seems pretty simplistic considering all the fiddling"

RULES COMPLEXITY SCORE:13 to start a first game .. 39 to be ready to fully plan ahead(39 includes understanding 20 gene cards)(Note: roughly speaking this is a concept count, not strategic complexity)(Note: 16 of the 20 gene cards are all available to buy at will during the game, and there are 4 upgrade genes. An understanding of all the genes is a strategic advantage. There are variants which reduce this complexity.)